In Bangladesh for a couple of days...or longer?
September 2007
For the last half hour of the flight into Dhaka out of the window all you can see is flooded fields. All you can see of the rectangular fields are the low fences and the water in them. In some the water is so deep that it has a mirror-like, reflective stillness. Others, where fences have burst, have turned brown with churned up mud, blurring into the clearer, stiller water. Slow moving streams curl their way through the fields and into the beginnings of the silted up delta. In some of the deeper floods you can't see fields at all, just the tall chimneys of brick kilns rising out of the water. The occasional house on stilts is in the water. All the other houses and buildings stand with water right up to or even in the doors, looking fragile and vulnerable. One has the sense they could be engulfed at any moment.
This is the second big flood of this monsoon season and it has come towards the end of the traditional rainy season when the waters should be subsiding into the sea. People blame climate change, but perhaps there was always an unpredictable element to monsoons and the consequent floods, both in scale and time. The more important question is why, considering that flooding happens pretty much every year when there isn't a drought, the authorities have not built better - or any - flood defences and why so many people live so close to the water in what is said to be the most densely populated piece of land on earth. Twenty million people have been displaced, apparently awaiting flood and food relief. The people may be resilient but the country's infrastructure is not. The consequences of the flood is likely to be widespread dysentery, which is a perennial hazard not just for tourists, and possibly if things go badly wrong, cholera too. People wait with a fatalistic air, not hopeful of ready or permanent relief.
When it rains in downtown Dhaka the water does not run off through street drains. There aren't many and they are mostly blocked or broken. The potholes fill and the narrower roads turn into greenish-brownish ponds. The pavements are high so, if the rain is not too heavy, the water is contained on the roads and riskshaws and cars splash slowly through them. Children, barefoot and some naked, play noisily with smiles and laughter in the water, unaware of the dangers to their health and it would seem with nowhere else to go. One lucky group of children has a deflated football bouncing across the surface of the water. One small child wearing no shoes, perhaps seven years old, is knee deep in water pushing his father along in a wheelchair in the middle of the road, with cars and rickshaws going round him. His air is determined and defiant, defying the cars not to give way.
The Radisson hotel is near the airport in the cantonment part of Dhaka which has been smartened up for a south Asian international summit a few years ago, complete with a new wide road and the first flyover in Bangladesh. The hotel is new, vast and rather empty. At breakfast most of the others there look like young people working for international development agencies. The odd European businessman eats breakfast in a white shirt and tie, probably contemplating ruefully how he managed to blot his copybook and not get sent somewhere with better prospects, like India or China. Being far from home at the weekend had best be in a good cause. One or two chic European women look like they might be sourcing suppliers in the garment trade for European fashion chains. These women wear white cotton and have acquired a brightly coloured Bangladeshi silk dupatta which they wear in the Punjabi style, round the front with the ends over both shoulders. If they wear it again when they get back to Europe, it will be in another style. Or perhaps it'll stay in the cupboard, because orange doesn't look great on a grey day in Antwerp.
The area around the hotel is green and manicured with large army buildings painted in benign shades of cream and pale yellow, none of them look like they are really there for military purposes, they are hospitals, clinics or leisure clubs for the military and the diplomats who live in Gulshan, the most posh end of town where most Expats live in houses rather bigger than the ones they could afford back home. Fortunately servants are readily available to keep them clean and indeed for everything else, including avoiding the walk from the sofa to the fridge for a drink. The drink when it arrives is accompanied by the thought that they must go to the gym at the club or in an international hotel soon. The neighbours are usually also expats and neighbourly relations are generally poor. The differences in'hardship' allowances paid by the various European Governments is a consuming subject of conversation, as endlessly fascinating as house prices, school fees and the demise of occupational pension schemes are to the good people of Weybridge.
Beyond the cantonement, driving into town you go past various missiles and heavy duty armoury now painted up or polished up until they shine as bright as a good soldier's boots and turned into benign street sculpture. And then the white walls of what was the Prime Minister's office. Since the military established order and control and installed a caretaker Government apparently within acceptable constitutional limits, the Prime Minister has been re-titled the Chief Advisor; presumably advisor to the Generals, not the people. Politics in Bangladesh is poisonous. All the leaders from the dynasties established after the 1971 war of independence from Pakistan are in gaol, amidst recomriminations and mutual loathing of epic proprotions. Mutual loathing is their overarching ideology. They are, by common consent, an unappealing lot and no one, even amongst the liberal intelligentsia, is arguing for a rapid return to civilian democratic rule if it would mean putting any combination of that lot back in power. So, the current arrangements of a caretaker Goverment, approved by the military, seems to be acceptable, for no better reason than it has re-established day to day order, put food back in the shops, stopped buses being overturned and spontaneous rioting in the streets. Corruption, often sponsored by a political faction, is endemic, taking the form of vote-buying in elections alongside the quotidian hassles of bribery to get anything ordinary done. Nepotism, again in the patronage of political factions, has corroded the fabric of academic and intellectual life. For their own reasons the international community also probably think that the current relatively stable arrangements are the least worst option. Above all they fear that the civilian political parties will turn a blind eye, or perhaps even tactily encourage the rise of ultra-conservative and militant Islamic leaders. The military no doubt know that, in international eyes, a good part of their legitimacy comes from their secular, rather than constitutional or democratic credentials. The political future in the short and the long term remains uncertain, perhaps bleak. Local newspaper commentators watch the scene in Pakistan with interest, where Musharaf appears to want Benazir Bhutto to return, but has booted out Nawaz Sharif. Maybe watching this delicate military-democratic dance is of particular interest in Bangladesh because it is an emerging kind of politics which, because it brings a certain kind of stability, might find its way here soon. Not the least of the reasons for the democratic and economic success of India is the resolute disinterest of the military in politics. My experience of military top brass in India is that they find the complications of Indian politics boring.
Amidst all this the Bangladeshi economy is growing healthily, the manufacturing sector, particularly garments, benefits from benign world economic conditions and rampant consumer demand in developed countries. Their cost base is one of the lowest in the world and that has for the moment, along with high quality standards in textiles, allowed them to fend off Chinese competition. But some of their competitive advantage may come from ignoring decent labour and environmental standards. In order to avoid a monstrous traffic jam, we took a detour via the back streets in which many of the garment factories are sited. Unlike in Shenzhen and Guangzhou, these are not vast, relatively modern factories with equally vast dormitories attached. They are small, rundown shabby buildings, whitewashed a long time ago but now covered in green-black mould from floods and the general levels of humidity. Often the tops of the buildings are not complete, because the owners intend to put another storey on top at some undefined point in the future. Or, conversely, a random enforcement of local planning laws has forced the owner to remove a storey or two or, probably, face an extortionate fine. Ouside these buildings are small handpainted signs giving the name of the company, "Yung Fashions", for example. Occasionally I was told the streets fill with the run off of dye and blue and green water runs through the streets, temporarily dyeing the road and any unwary passer-by who could stand the overpowering chemical stench. Standards of machinery and technology must be low and labour standards are undoubtedly rock bottom, so either vigorous enforcement measures by European or American companies responding to ethical or reputational concerns are a threat. Indonesia's textile exports have been more or less wiped out by Chinese competition. One wonders what is to be the fate of the Bangladeshi garment industry over the next couple of deacdes.
Law enforcement, which looks pretty random, can be seen here and there. Buildings built illegally into the road have had their fronts shaved off, with the result that the front of the building is now what used to be the corridor with doors opening straight onto a precipitate drop into the road. Street vendors get moved on regularly, even in the midst of selling a bunch of bananas. There has also been a crackdown on 'illegal' rickshaw owners. Their rickshaws (the prettiest, most colourful and most cherished in the world in my limited experience) are either turned over backwards with their handlebars and wheels in the air and stacked in ditches by the side of the road or they are impounded in a swampy enclosure at the edge of the city. If the owners cannot pay for a licence and thereby reclaim them, they sink slowly into the swamp. In this morning's paper the photograph of the day is the colourful canopies of rickshaws seemingly mushrooming out of an emerald green field. In fact they are sinking and will shortly be sunk.
By far the highest earner of GDP is migrant remittances, apparently according to an economist I spoke to, running to US$6 billion a year. (Second is foreign development aid, US$250 million for UK's DIFD this year, shortly to double.) The largest single source of those migrant remittances is Saudi Arabia with the USA and the UK following behind. Most UK remittances go to the Sylhet region from where most British Bangladeshis originate. As a result longevity and health in Sylhet is better than the average in Bangladesh and fertility rates are coming down as people start to believe that their families abroad bring a degree of economic stability to their future and having large numbers of children is no longer a necessary insurance policy against impoverishment in old age. Apparently, British Bangladeshi businessmen, mainly in the restaurant trade, have built themselves enormous balustraded Greco-Roman villas, painted white and pastel shades, amongst the palm trees and the flooded fields of Sylhet. I haven't seen them, but it sounds plausible. Old money in Bengal on both sides of the India-Bangladesh border with its long, distinguished cultural traditions in literature, music and painting are inevitably snobbish about the accoutrements of new money. The (Bangladeshi-born) British High Commissioner, Anwar Choudhury, had the temerity to mention on Bangladeshi radio that he thought (I paraphrase) that Tagore was a bore. Immediately afterwards he wondered whether he had gone a little far for a professional diplomat even with the benefit of a local ethnic origin, treading too heavily on local elite sensibilities. In fact he received a thousand SMS messages agreeing with him.
September 2007
For the last half hour of the flight into Dhaka out of the window all you can see is flooded fields. All you can see of the rectangular fields are the low fences and the water in them. In some the water is so deep that it has a mirror-like, reflective stillness. Others, where fences have burst, have turned brown with churned up mud, blurring into the clearer, stiller water. Slow moving streams curl their way through the fields and into the beginnings of the silted up delta. In some of the deeper floods you can't see fields at all, just the tall chimneys of brick kilns rising out of the water. The occasional house on stilts is in the water. All the other houses and buildings stand with water right up to or even in the doors, looking fragile and vulnerable. One has the sense they could be engulfed at any moment.
This is the second big flood of this monsoon season and it has come towards the end of the traditional rainy season when the waters should be subsiding into the sea. People blame climate change, but perhaps there was always an unpredictable element to monsoons and the consequent floods, both in scale and time. The more important question is why, considering that flooding happens pretty much every year when there isn't a drought, the authorities have not built better - or any - flood defences and why so many people live so close to the water in what is said to be the most densely populated piece of land on earth. Twenty million people have been displaced, apparently awaiting flood and food relief. The people may be resilient but the country's infrastructure is not. The consequences of the flood is likely to be widespread dysentery, which is a perennial hazard not just for tourists, and possibly if things go badly wrong, cholera too. People wait with a fatalistic air, not hopeful of ready or permanent relief.
When it rains in downtown Dhaka the water does not run off through street drains. There aren't many and they are mostly blocked or broken. The potholes fill and the narrower roads turn into greenish-brownish ponds. The pavements are high so, if the rain is not too heavy, the water is contained on the roads and riskshaws and cars splash slowly through them. Children, barefoot and some naked, play noisily with smiles and laughter in the water, unaware of the dangers to their health and it would seem with nowhere else to go. One lucky group of children has a deflated football bouncing across the surface of the water. One small child wearing no shoes, perhaps seven years old, is knee deep in water pushing his father along in a wheelchair in the middle of the road, with cars and rickshaws going round him. His air is determined and defiant, defying the cars not to give way.
The Radisson hotel is near the airport in the cantonment part of Dhaka which has been smartened up for a south Asian international summit a few years ago, complete with a new wide road and the first flyover in Bangladesh. The hotel is new, vast and rather empty. At breakfast most of the others there look like young people working for international development agencies. The odd European businessman eats breakfast in a white shirt and tie, probably contemplating ruefully how he managed to blot his copybook and not get sent somewhere with better prospects, like India or China. Being far from home at the weekend had best be in a good cause. One or two chic European women look like they might be sourcing suppliers in the garment trade for European fashion chains. These women wear white cotton and have acquired a brightly coloured Bangladeshi silk dupatta which they wear in the Punjabi style, round the front with the ends over both shoulders. If they wear it again when they get back to Europe, it will be in another style. Or perhaps it'll stay in the cupboard, because orange doesn't look great on a grey day in Antwerp.
The area around the hotel is green and manicured with large army buildings painted in benign shades of cream and pale yellow, none of them look like they are really there for military purposes, they are hospitals, clinics or leisure clubs for the military and the diplomats who live in Gulshan, the most posh end of town where most Expats live in houses rather bigger than the ones they could afford back home. Fortunately servants are readily available to keep them clean and indeed for everything else, including avoiding the walk from the sofa to the fridge for a drink. The drink when it arrives is accompanied by the thought that they must go to the gym at the club or in an international hotel soon. The neighbours are usually also expats and neighbourly relations are generally poor. The differences in'hardship' allowances paid by the various European Governments is a consuming subject of conversation, as endlessly fascinating as house prices, school fees and the demise of occupational pension schemes are to the good people of Weybridge.
Beyond the cantonement, driving into town you go past various missiles and heavy duty armoury now painted up or polished up until they shine as bright as a good soldier's boots and turned into benign street sculpture. And then the white walls of what was the Prime Minister's office. Since the military established order and control and installed a caretaker Government apparently within acceptable constitutional limits, the Prime Minister has been re-titled the Chief Advisor; presumably advisor to the Generals, not the people. Politics in Bangladesh is poisonous. All the leaders from the dynasties established after the 1971 war of independence from Pakistan are in gaol, amidst recomriminations and mutual loathing of epic proprotions. Mutual loathing is their overarching ideology. They are, by common consent, an unappealing lot and no one, even amongst the liberal intelligentsia, is arguing for a rapid return to civilian democratic rule if it would mean putting any combination of that lot back in power. So, the current arrangements of a caretaker Goverment, approved by the military, seems to be acceptable, for no better reason than it has re-established day to day order, put food back in the shops, stopped buses being overturned and spontaneous rioting in the streets. Corruption, often sponsored by a political faction, is endemic, taking the form of vote-buying in elections alongside the quotidian hassles of bribery to get anything ordinary done. Nepotism, again in the patronage of political factions, has corroded the fabric of academic and intellectual life. For their own reasons the international community also probably think that the current relatively stable arrangements are the least worst option. Above all they fear that the civilian political parties will turn a blind eye, or perhaps even tactily encourage the rise of ultra-conservative and militant Islamic leaders. The military no doubt know that, in international eyes, a good part of their legitimacy comes from their secular, rather than constitutional or democratic credentials. The political future in the short and the long term remains uncertain, perhaps bleak. Local newspaper commentators watch the scene in Pakistan with interest, where Musharaf appears to want Benazir Bhutto to return, but has booted out Nawaz Sharif. Maybe watching this delicate military-democratic dance is of particular interest in Bangladesh because it is an emerging kind of politics which, because it brings a certain kind of stability, might find its way here soon. Not the least of the reasons for the democratic and economic success of India is the resolute disinterest of the military in politics. My experience of military top brass in India is that they find the complications of Indian politics boring.
Amidst all this the Bangladeshi economy is growing healthily, the manufacturing sector, particularly garments, benefits from benign world economic conditions and rampant consumer demand in developed countries. Their cost base is one of the lowest in the world and that has for the moment, along with high quality standards in textiles, allowed them to fend off Chinese competition. But some of their competitive advantage may come from ignoring decent labour and environmental standards. In order to avoid a monstrous traffic jam, we took a detour via the back streets in which many of the garment factories are sited. Unlike in Shenzhen and Guangzhou, these are not vast, relatively modern factories with equally vast dormitories attached. They are small, rundown shabby buildings, whitewashed a long time ago but now covered in green-black mould from floods and the general levels of humidity. Often the tops of the buildings are not complete, because the owners intend to put another storey on top at some undefined point in the future. Or, conversely, a random enforcement of local planning laws has forced the owner to remove a storey or two or, probably, face an extortionate fine. Ouside these buildings are small handpainted signs giving the name of the company, "Yung Fashions", for example. Occasionally I was told the streets fill with the run off of dye and blue and green water runs through the streets, temporarily dyeing the road and any unwary passer-by who could stand the overpowering chemical stench. Standards of machinery and technology must be low and labour standards are undoubtedly rock bottom, so either vigorous enforcement measures by European or American companies responding to ethical or reputational concerns are a threat. Indonesia's textile exports have been more or less wiped out by Chinese competition. One wonders what is to be the fate of the Bangladeshi garment industry over the next couple of deacdes.
Law enforcement, which looks pretty random, can be seen here and there. Buildings built illegally into the road have had their fronts shaved off, with the result that the front of the building is now what used to be the corridor with doors opening straight onto a precipitate drop into the road. Street vendors get moved on regularly, even in the midst of selling a bunch of bananas. There has also been a crackdown on 'illegal' rickshaw owners. Their rickshaws (the prettiest, most colourful and most cherished in the world in my limited experience) are either turned over backwards with their handlebars and wheels in the air and stacked in ditches by the side of the road or they are impounded in a swampy enclosure at the edge of the city. If the owners cannot pay for a licence and thereby reclaim them, they sink slowly into the swamp. In this morning's paper the photograph of the day is the colourful canopies of rickshaws seemingly mushrooming out of an emerald green field. In fact they are sinking and will shortly be sunk.
By far the highest earner of GDP is migrant remittances, apparently according to an economist I spoke to, running to US$6 billion a year. (Second is foreign development aid, US$250 million for UK's DIFD this year, shortly to double.) The largest single source of those migrant remittances is Saudi Arabia with the USA and the UK following behind. Most UK remittances go to the Sylhet region from where most British Bangladeshis originate. As a result longevity and health in Sylhet is better than the average in Bangladesh and fertility rates are coming down as people start to believe that their families abroad bring a degree of economic stability to their future and having large numbers of children is no longer a necessary insurance policy against impoverishment in old age. Apparently, British Bangladeshi businessmen, mainly in the restaurant trade, have built themselves enormous balustraded Greco-Roman villas, painted white and pastel shades, amongst the palm trees and the flooded fields of Sylhet. I haven't seen them, but it sounds plausible. Old money in Bengal on both sides of the India-Bangladesh border with its long, distinguished cultural traditions in literature, music and painting are inevitably snobbish about the accoutrements of new money. The (Bangladeshi-born) British High Commissioner, Anwar Choudhury, had the temerity to mention on Bangladeshi radio that he thought (I paraphrase) that Tagore was a bore. Immediately afterwards he wondered whether he had gone a little far for a professional diplomat even with the benefit of a local ethnic origin, treading too heavily on local elite sensibilities. In fact he received a thousand SMS messages agreeing with him.
Tagore told Michael Young when he was a pupil at Dartington school, that, if he wanted to be a writer, he would have to learn to describe the sound of a door opening and closing. Presumably this line was used to many aspirant writers and was meant both literally and metaphorically. Another great Bengali writer, Arundhati Roy, in the God of Small Things, does indeed describe the sound of a door opening, so perhaps this piece of Tagore-ian wisdom is handed down in a secret covenant to Bengali writers, into the fellowship of whom old Tagore was seeking to recruit young Michael Young.
Getting in and out of Bangladesh by air is an unpredictable business. I am writing this at 11.30 on Sunday morning waiting for a flight to Kathmandu which was due to leave at 10.30. No information is currently available about the expected time of departure. It's started raining.
Getting in and out of Bangladesh by air is an unpredictable business. I am writing this at 11.30 on Sunday morning waiting for a flight to Kathmandu which was due to leave at 10.30. No information is currently available about the expected time of departure. It's started raining.
See the photos of Bangladesh at www.flickr.com/photos/gerardlemos/sets
